When Next.js keeps your scroll position and you wish it wouldn’t

Next.js (App Router or Pages) often preserves scroll between navigations. That is deliberate and sometimes nice — except on content-heavy sites where landing mid-page feels like a bug.

I hit this on a project with long articles and nested routes. Users clicked “next chapter” and landed scrolled to the same pixel offset as the previous page. Confusing.

Fix: listen to route changes (e.g. usePathname() in the app router) and call window.scrollTo(0, 0) when the path changes. Wrap it in a client component mounted at layout level so you do not repeat it on every page.

You might still want scroll restoration for certain flows (modals, tabs). For a straight “new page, start at top” mental model, this is enough and easy to reason about.